Stay on target

Electronic Arts may not be officially part of E3, but with their own event across town, they might as well be. They’re still in LA, announcing games and holding flashy press conferences. And since it’s the only company Disney contracted to make Star Wars games, EA’s event is always good for some Star Wars news. Saturday night’s press conference included one particularly exciting announcement with an interesting twist. The game was not, in any form, at the event. No cinematic trailer, no gameplay footage, not even a logo. Instead, we got a guy sitting in his auditorium seat, talking about the game.

EA’s press conference was full of developers going off the script. Devs were given a surprisingly large amount of time to talk about their inspirations and hopes for the games they were working on, usually followed by some sort of game footage. Respawn Entertainment took that concept to the extreme. No footage, just CEO Vince Zampella painting a word picture. And what a picture. The game is called Star Wars: Fallen Order. As the title suggests, it takes place between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope: Right after the fall of the Jedi Order. It will follow a young Padawan trying to survive in a world where Jedi are hunted. Zampella wouldn’t reveal too much about the game. It’s not in a state where they can show anything yet. But that’s certainly a promising premise.

“It takes place during the Dark Times when the Jedi are being hunted. So it’s gonna be spectacular,” Zampella said. I hope he’s right about that. It’s certainly got some talent behind it. God of War’s Stig Asmussen is directing the third-person action game.

We’ve been overdue for another single-player Star Wars game for a while. As promising as this sounds, there is reason to be skeptical. After Visceral’s Star Wars game (helmed by Uncharted’s Amy Hennig) was cancelled, it started to seem like another single-player action game in this franchise was out of the question. But hey, this new one is out there now. It has a title and a very talented studio behind it. My only question is can we please pilot an AT-ST or AT-AT like a Titanfall mech. There has to be some reason EA chose Respawn to take this project. Here’s hoping EA’s favor continues to smile upon the studio and we get to play whatever Star War: Fallen Order is in December of 2019.

Just because EA has a new Star Wars game coming up doesn’t mean the company is forgetting about the one it already released. It’d be hard to forget the game that messily blew up in your face last fall, causing a worldwide backlash against the entire concept of random loot boxes. EA is still talking about Star Wars: Battlefront II. The message this E3 weekend: It’s better now, you guys! Now that the awful, broken progression system is out, new character announcements can be fun. We can enjoy seeing who we’ll play as next without having to worry about the grind to unlock them.

The big news is the continuation of “Solo Season,” which began in May. They’re adding a newmission based on the Kessel run. The Han Solo movie may not have done as well at the box office as Disney hoped, but that Kessel run scene was cool as hell. If you watched that and thought, “I want to play that in a video game,” it looks like EA thought the same thing. Honestly, dodging an inter-dimensional space octopus and bragging about parsecs sounds like a lot of fun.

There’s also a Clone Wars expansion coming, which is cool. The Clone Wars is some of the best prequel content to come out of Lucasfilm. The series is second only to Rogue One and Star Wars: Rebels. The expansion will add the Geonosis map. If you haven’t seen the series, that’s where the separatists’ battle droids are manufactured. It’s the site of a huge battle early on, and EA says it will be the largest map ever built for the game. The expansion also brings new characters, including General Grievous, Young Obi Wan Kenobi, Young Anakin Skywalker, and Count Dooku.

…I mean, those are cool and all, but if you’re making a Clone Wars DLC, there’s a huge omission here. Where’s Ahsoka Tano? She was easily the best part of the series. Her presence alone made young Anakin a much more tolerable character. She forced him to take responsibility, while he indulged her rebellious streak. And here she is, left out again. No wonder she left the Jedi Order.

EA will announce more details on the Clone Wars expansion sometime in the next few months. As cool as it is, your super-strong hero character will still awkwardly take a knee on the battlefield when they take too much damage. No matter what they put in the game, that’s not going to look any less silly.